January 17, 2008 – 11:06 am
Scott Beatty’s got a brand-spakin’ new book out and this spiffy looking hardcover hits two of the things closest to his heart: DC Comics characters and action figures. I know first-hand what an insane DC trivia geek Scott is, and he certainly knows his toys as well. In fact, he generally won’t shut up about them once you get him going.
The DC Comics Action Figure Archive retails for $40 (yeowch), but you can snag at at Amazon right now for just $24. Support a true fanboy and get yourself a nice big book full of cool trivia and lotsa pics, all wrapped up and disguised as a coffee table book. Me? I’m still waiting very very patiently for my Ambush Bug action figure to come out, complete with sidekick Cheeks the Wonder Toy…
January 15, 2008 – 1:37 pm
Not exactly sure where or how to get one of these, but this would certainly encourage me to actually buy a suit, or some nice shirts at the very least. According to the Design Spotter site, this Hanger Super is:
Super is a coat hanger which shape is connection between classic hanger and sign of superman. This hanger will be hidden under your favourit jacket or shirt. It is made in typical red, blue and yellow colour or in black and white.
Designer: Roman Ficek
Made in Slovakia
It’s made by Comunistar, yet I can’t find it on their official site anywhere for some reason…
January 10, 2008 – 4:06 pm
LA Weekly has a really cool slideshow covering the Stan Lee: Under the Influence art opening featuring some 41 photos from the event. The art tribute was held at L.A.’s Golden Apple Comics.
Here’s a few of my favorites from the show:
Dan Goodsell’s Mr. Toast
Green Tee, Desiree Fessler
Artist Mark Bodnar with his painting, The Hopeful Bite.
Thanks to Rob for the heads up!
December 20, 2007 – 9:54 pm
Matt Haley’s a pretty talented artist. Heck, I’d read the phone book every month if it were sequential art and Matt drew it starring any one of his female characters. (Particularly Ghost.) But he’s also always up for some fun, and just for kicks, he mocked up this fake Lando movie poster based off of the original 1971 “Shaft” movie posters. I would so go see this one in a heartbeat.
Matt Haley’s “Lando” movie poster:
And the original Shaft poster just for comparison’s sake:
September 29, 2007 – 3:11 pm
I’m doing a little clean-up on the site. I still need to tweak the background a bit on the sidebars (gonna remove that shaded grey, at least on top). But I added a full links section to the right sidebar. That’s an ever-evolving Comics Directory of official links, broken down by categories. You can still click the word balloon topics in the header and get the same results, but I thought it’d be nice to also have all those links in one place.
I also just created a new links category to start collecting links of Creator Blogs. So if you’re a creator and you blog semi-regularly, please let me know and I’ll add you a.s.a.p.
September 28, 2007 – 3:40 pm
This week Bob over at Bobbarama published a refreshing and pretty damn funny write-up on his post Where have all the superheroes gone?
I’m always fascinated to read anything about comics or superheroes when it’s written in a more mainstream or completely non-comic arena. Granted, the articles generally start with the same ol’ “Pow! Bam! Zap! Holy comics are growing up, Batman” type of intro and go on to say that comic books are more adult these days. Uh, yeah. They’ve kinda been like that since the mid-’80s. 1986 in fact when Dark Knight and Watchmen came out and kicked the entire industry in the nuts. But in a good way. (If there is such a thing.)
Anyway, Bob writes a highly entertaining blog that’s pretty much all over the place and he does bring up superheroes once in a while. The post starts off based on a conversation Bob had with a co-worker about Batman not being a real hero… and evolves into Bob giving his opinion on what other costumed characters should fall into the non-hero role. Wonder Woman, Elongated Man, Green Lantern to name a few.
Heck, the guy even mentions Ant Man and shows the cover to the Batman: Son of the Demon graphic novel, so you know he’s a legit fanboy. Anyways, just wanted to send Bob some link love and give him an additional 2 or 3 eyeballs on his site (assuming the 3 readers I have actually listen to me)…
September 28, 2007 – 11:29 am
Anyone looking to snag a Wii? If you have a blog (even a MySpace one counts) you can enter an easy contest to win one over at Everybody Loves Coupons.
What You Win:
How You Enter:
Just write a post about online coupons on your blog. and include the following:
2) You must mention that the contest is being sponsored by Everybody Loves Coupons and link to the URL: http://www.ultimatecoupons.com/blog/
Here’s a short example of what you can write, though feel free to write about anything online coupon-related as long as you include the 2 links above:
Did you know you can save money by using coupon codes when you shop online? Sites like UltimateCoupons.com offer tons of great online coupons for hundreds of online merchants to help you get free shipping or dollars off your regular purchases. Plus, you can Win a Nintendo Wii from their coupon blog EverybodyLovesCoupons.
Just make your post by October 31, 2007 at 11:59pm ET and send your post URL to andrew@ultimatecoupons.com along with the post’s title.
September 27, 2007 – 9:59 pm
I was just over at Bone-creator Jeff Smith’s blog and was psyched to see he did the album cover and some spot illustrations for the band Say Anything’s new album “In Defense of the Genre.” I never heard of the band (though I’m a big fan of the John Cusack film of the same name), but I always love when any comic artist “breaks through” to the music medium to do album covers.
Here’s a look at what Jeff did for the band:
September 21, 2007 – 12:45 pm
My friend Brian is my go-to guy when it comes to new music. I’m typically an ’80s hard rock, hair band kind of guy (Twisted Forever!), but I also can get into mellow, alternative stuff as well as poppy or folksy. Brian has about 900 million CDs in his collection, so whenever I’m in the mood for something new, I hit him up via IM and just tell him the “mood” I’m looking for in terms of music, and he’ll instantly shoot back 3 or 4 bands and albums for me to look into. He’s usually pretty dead on.
For comics, I have my friend Justin to give me some advice, but our tastes aren’t exactly 100% so it’s somewhat of a hit and miss. Plus he’s not too into the independent or small press world (which is either awesome or horrible depending upon what you grab), so that doesn’t help me there. Not to mention he’s not on IM 24/7, so at nights and weekends, I’m screwed.
What I’d love to see some genius programmer come up with is a Supreme Intelligence website that will grow and learn and recommend specific graphic novels for me to check out. It’d start off asking me a bunch of favorite books I like (or maybe similar to Amazon’s rate this purchase feature, you can give it a number rating, an I hate it rating or an I don’t want to vote rating) and then ask me some more general questions like:
- Do you follow titles or creators?
- Are you more of an artist’s fan or writer’s fan?
- Who’s your favorite character?
- What companies do you like?
That sort of thing. And much like those wacky “20 questions” AI web programs out there, this one would learn the more you use it. So it’d quickly see I love Alan Moore but after a few specific Halo Jones trade suggestions that I reject, it’d learn that my taste isn’t 100% loyalty.
The end result is I just want to go to a site and have it spit out some recommendations of books for me that are real targeted picks for me based on my tastes, rather than Amazon’s which is purely based on recent purchases.
Anyone up for the challenge? No Kree knowledge necessary…
August 28, 2007 – 10:46 pm
No, I’m not auditioning to replace Kevin Spacey in the next Man of Steel movie. I just really dislike the character. Maybe hate’s too strong of a word but ever since I was a kid I just never could get into the character. He was too strong, too powerful, too invulnerable. And then there was the hokey signal watch, Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, and the rest of the Daily Planet crew. Captain Marvel on the other hand, I did like. Yeah he was big, red and cheesy, but he was basically a little boy in a Superman-like body, with his powers based on magic. That for some reason never bothered me. And he was never as tough as Supes.
Heck, even the first two Christopher Reeve Superman movies were great and I loved the character. But when it comes to the comic books, there are literally a handful of Superman stories I can stomach. That’s why I very reluctantly ordered Kurt Busiek and Stuart Immonen’s “Secret Identity” trade paperback recently from Amazon. I was looking to pick up something good, that was self-contained and I knew next to nothing about. My buddy Justin recommended it despite my loathing of Superman and I have to say… he was dead on. When Kurt Busiek is on, he’s on. His personal, everyman approach really humanizes any character, in this case, Superman.
Now this isn’t the same Superman we know; it’s set on an alternate Earth where superheroes never existed, only in comics. Why, just like our world. And on that world is a kid named Clark Kent, who’s relentlessly teased about his name. Except a funny thing happens when he hits his teenage years… this Clark actually starts developing Superman-like powers. And the rest of the series explores those powers but more importantly, his reaction to them and how he deals with them. I was intrigued by the end of the first issue and completely sucked in about halfway through the second. And it delivers straight through to the end. And Stuart Immonen’s art is a perfect compliment to Busiek’s prose. I was actually sad when I got to the end, looking and hoping for just one more page. If these two ever do another Superman-related project, I may just have to pick it up.
So now I can add Secret Identity to the very short list of Superman stories I like. The others would include a pair by Alan Moore (The two-part “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow” and “For the Man Who Has Everything”), Frank Miller’s Dark Knight (where Superman’s a complete tool and actually redeems himself in the end), and Mark Waid and Alex Ross’ Kingdom Come.
Anyone else have any seriously killer issues/trades/mini-series starring Superman that I just have to check out? I’m slightly less skeptical these days about Superman stories, thanks to Kurt and Stuart…
